[wordup] Are Feds wasting tax money on hydrogen full cell technology?

[Adam Shand]

Via: politech at politechbot.com
From: Steven Thomas Bond <stbond at citynet.net>

Actually this is as big a scandal from a scientific standpoint as any you
handle regularly:

    http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0110/p1s3-usgn.htm

My reply to Christian Science Monitor:

Subjct: Hydrogen fueled cars
  Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 22:20:25 -0500
  From: Steven Thomas Bond <stbond at citynet.net>
    To: oped at csps.com

This concept reflects the danger of decisions made by politicians
unfamiliar with chemistry and and articles written by reporters who have
been trained primarily in the use of language.  There is a lot known about
the use of hydrogen.  The "hydrogen economy" has been discussed for
decades.  There is an article in Scientific American, now a decade or more
old, about the use of hydrogen when fossil fuels runs out. There are some
serious problems with hydrogen as a fuel, and only one good point - that
it makes water only as a result of combustion.

The really big problem with hydrogen is where to get it.  It is so highly
reactive there are no stores of uncombined hydrogen in nature. None!  Any
little wisp that gets into the atmosphere is shortly combined with the
highly reactive oxygen already there.  Industrial hydrogen at the present
time is made from methane, natural gas.  When one molecule of methane
burns it forms two water molecules and one carbon dioxide molecule.

Consider what happens if you intend to use methane as the source of
hydrogen which is subsequently to be used as fuel. Compared to using the
methane directly, energy is lost converting the methane to hydrogen and
carbon, and you loose the energy obtained by oxidation of carbon.  The
greater efficiency of the fuel cell, compared to the internal combustion
engine, offsets this loss to some degree.

Since the carbon atom gives off much more energy on being converted to
carbon dioxide than hydrogen does on being converted to water,  liquid
fuels like gasoline (C8H18) and diesel fuel (C16H34), are much more
energy dense fuels than methane.  So the proposition of using hydrogen
for fuel boils down to where do you get the hydrogen?  A vast amount of
hydrogen?

Fifteen years ago the answer was to use hydrolysis of water, which, of
course, is very abundant.  This reaction requires energy be supplied to
break the hydrogen free of the oxygen. This energy is a little more than
the amount of energy that is recovered when the hydrogen recombines with
oxygen in a fuel cell.  The "hydrogen economy"  thus requires another
source of energy.  The hydrogen fuel (and oxygen from the air) is only an
intermediary between some advanced energy source and the energy used to
power the vehicle.  If natural gas is to be the source of hydrogen, we are
choosing a lower grade chemical source of energy, which requires a
wasteful conversion, and a natural resource that is only slightly less
limited in quantity than oil.

A few years ago nuclear fusion (not nuclear fission, the current "nuclear
power") appeared to be the shining light on the horizon.  Now, for reasons
I will not go into in detail in this letter, that prospect has dimmed.
Nuclear power folks think interference of the wealthy and powerful fossil
fuel industry with getting appropriate funding and recognition of need for
fusion by government may have something to do with fusion's decline, along
with the unanticipated technical difficulties and long time to payoff.

Right now there are a lot of chemists and physicists who are quietly
laughing up their sleeves about the adoption of a nonfeasable technology
for energy sufficiency.  But they are also amused by the "star
wars"missile boondoggle, another technical lead balloon.  And other
things.

God bless America!  People don't realize how much we need that kind of
help.

S. Thomas Bond,  Ph. D.
304-884-7352